“IT’S NOT TRUE that married men live longer than single ones. It only seems that way,” I was emailed by a friend, who shall go nameless to protect the guilty.

Sweet husband that I am, I would never tell a tasteless story like that. Even so, my so-called friends don’t seem to appreciate my perfection, and what a great catch What’s Her Name got when she got hitched to me.

“How’s your wife doing?” Sam Evans asked me.

“Great,” I replied. “She has a wonderful husband, you know.”

“Oh?” he said. “I hadn’t heard that she had remarried.”

“I SAW your and your wife’s picture in the paper after her retirement celebration,” said Don Black.

“Didn’t you think I looked quite handsome?” I asked.

“Not exactly. But by sitting next to her, it sure made your wife look even better by comparison,” seemed an unkind thing for a man of the cloth to say.

I find that, like Rodney Dangerfield, I get no respect.

“After reading YOUR LAST COLUMN I thought you might like to read something clever,” Fred Dent prefaced an email he sent me. He claims he didn’t mean it in the way it sounds, but I’m not convinced.

“HOW’S WHN DOING?” asked someone in my Tuesday morning coffee group.

“She’s still crazy about me,” I responded.

“That shows she’s crazy all right,” replied most of the group simultaneously. It’s really quite a disreputable group, so I didn’t really expect an intelligent comment from them. Even though a not very high class group, our meeting at Duffy’s Deli still adds a great deal of prestige to the establishment and its proprietors, Greg and Casey Garrett. Which seems to go unappreciated.

“I’M GOING TO TELL YOU something that probably no one in the group will be smart enough to understand, except for Runninger,” said Jerry Minge to the other members of my Thursday morning group. I felt warm feelings for Minge after this nice compliment. Until he added, “The only reason I know he’s real smart, is because he told me he is.”

YOU MAY remember the old story about the lady who had a parrot who cussed profusely, having originally been owned by a sailor. Hearing of her problem, her preacher told her:

“I have a parrot who does nothing but pray all day long. I’ll let you borrow her for a few days, so that your parrot can learn proper language from her. So they took his parrot to her home. The lady’s parrot let out a long whistle, and said, “Hey, babe. Let’s you and me do a little makin’ out.”

“Thank God!” said the preacher’s parrot. “My prayers have finally been answered!”

I’m afraid the same reverse effect has also occurred at my humble abode. After almost four years of marriage, it appears that rather than me adopting WHN’s good habits, she instead is at times getting my bad ones. Her neatness has not done a whole lot to cure my slovenly ways. But after four years of observing me, she seems to have inherited my propensity to spill food on her clothing.

While eating out a few weeks ago, she deposited a glob of gravy on her blouse. “That’s why I don’t take her out very often,” I remarked to the others at the table. “She’s always embarrassing me like that.”

But, as you know, husbands can’t win. Before the evening was over, I had spilled food on my shirt not once, but twice.

UNFORTUNATELY she has also become infected with my tendency to be a smartass. Just the other day, I told her about a chapter in a book I had seen entitled, “How To Get Husbands To Talk.”

“What they really need instead is a chapter on how to get them to shut up,” was her unkind reply.

This effrontery from the lady who recently gave a lengthy TMI (Too Much Information) answer to a doctor’s question about her symptoms. When she finally finished, the doc said, “That is an excellent answer. Unfortunately, you didn’t answer the question I asked.” Another example of how WHN is becoming a smartass:

“Please forgive us our sins,” she prayed while saying the blessing before lunch one day. “Especially Jack’s!”

WOMEN MAY consider themselves the equal of men, but they never will be, until they can walk down the street with a bald head and a beer gut, and still think they’re sexy.

Jack Runninger of Rome is a retired optometrist and state and national award-winning humor columnist. His most recent book, “Funny Female Foibles,” is available now. Readers may contact him at runningerj@comcast.net.